The Patriot Post® · Mamdani's Rotten Sack of Groceries

Earlier this year, New York City’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, announced an important initiative of his new administration. But unlike most new mayors who come into office talking about paving roads, boosting the economy, and cutting bureaucratic red tape, Mamdani proudly announced that his administration plans to open city-owned grocery stores.

From a purely political standpoint, it makes sense. Americans are paying more for groceries these days. The New York Post reports, “Food prices in the US have shot up by 33% over the last seven years, the biggest jump in grocery prices in half a century — with no relief in sight.”

(The raging conservative debate about grocery prices is tangential.)

There are many reasons for the high prices of groceries and consumer goods, but virtually none of them have anything to do with the people who actually own or operate the stores. Right out of the socialist playbook, Mamdani has successfully portrayed food companies as greedy business owners. In reality, selling groceries is a cutthroat business with tiny margins.

The Heritage Foundation’s Peter St. Onge and E.J. Antoni write, “The problem, of course, is grocery stores are in a razor-thin industry, sporting profit margins of roughly 2%. And that’s with competent management, which New York City government is decidedly not famous for.”

It doesn’t take a business degree from Fordham University to realize the city will lose (taxpayer) money. Government isn’t known for doing anything efficiently, so there’s reason to doubt that politicians running these grocery stores can compete with places like Walmart or Aldi or even the corner bodega, for that matter.

These stores will turn out just like the city’s subway and bus systems, which have been in the hands of government bureaucrats for nearly 90 years. After taking over the system from private companies, the Metropolitan Transit Authority hasn’t done anything consistently other than lose money.

In 2024 alone, the MTA lost nearly a billion dollars to turnstile jumpers, bus fare evaders, and unpaid bridge tolls, according to a report by the Citizens Budget Commission. The MTA’s response? Conduct a million-dollar study to understand the psychology of people who refuse to pay for subway rides. Meanwhile, New Yorkers are being charged higher fares.

The MTA basically has never made a penny, and Mamdani’s grocery stores won’t either.

Just this week, New Yorkers discovered just why politicians and city government pencil pushers shouldn’t be given authority to run them in the first place.

“The Mamdani administration left scores of questions unanswered Wednesday about the mayor’s plan to open five city-owned grocery stores — exposing major gaps in the taxpayer-backed undertaking,” reports the New York Post. “An Economic Development Corporation official, during an online info session, was forced to admit to prospective partners that the city had yet to figure out simple logistics, including how to reimburse operators or pay store employees. The EDC official even confessed the city didn’t know how it would calculate the cost of the supermarkets’ signature ‘core basket’ of essential goods, which Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said would be sold at 30% ‘below typical retail prices.’”

In other words, Mamdani and company have no business running a business. Commie grocery stores are doomed to fail from the get-go. These socialist pipe dreams never work out for anyone except the politicians who gain power over the lives of working-class people by promising what they can’t deliver. But the problem goes even further. The mom and pop grocery stores down the street will go out of business because they can’t stay afloat when competing taxpayer-funded “businesses” undercut prices by 30%.

To prevent others from coming in and buying groceries to resell at their own markets, Mamdani actually suggested that shoppers be required to show ID to buy groceries. These are the same people who think it’s racist to ask for an ID to vote. Even Mamdani realized the hypocrisy and quickly nixed the idea of requiring shoppers to flash an ID to buy milk. But if they could get away with it, they would.

For all the talk about providing residents with access to affordable groceries, this is really about gutting local businesses and leaving people with less access to affordable food. In fact, it’s the city and state government bureaucracy that’s leaving New York residents living in food deserts or unable to put food on the table.

As Seth Barron explains at City Journal, “it seems preposterous, in fact, for the mayor to wage war against neighborhood enterprises while he simultaneously promises to help small business thrive. This is where knowing something about the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which Mamdani is a member, comes in handy. One of the DSA’s precepts is that it is odious for anyone to profit from the needs of another.”

The old saying is that the devil is in the details, and it doesn’t take long to look at Mamdani’s grocery scheme as just another socialist power grab that will leave residents hungry and broke.